


Your Insides Are Rotten

by cookingwithcyanide



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dissociation, Gen, Generally Not A Fun Time, grindelwalds mind fuckery, my hands were shaking when i finished writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 04:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11751972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookingwithcyanide/pseuds/cookingwithcyanide
Summary: Grindelwald doesn't break people; Grindelwald leaves a tiny crack in people's minds and lets them break themselves.





	Your Insides Are Rotten

**Author's Note:**

> I write a lot of fluff. This is not that. Title and story inspired by Electric President's song "Monsters"
> 
> "Because you've got no friends/and you've got no heartbeat./Your insides are rotten now/so there's nothing to fix."

Before Grindelwald, Graves was an Auror. He poured his whole soul into his city and felt it thrum beneath his feet when he walked the streets. He was full of fire and love and passion for his city, and his Aurors, and for the law. Percival Graves poured his soul into New York and he thought that his city thanked him.

After Grindelwald, Graves is a husk. Grindelwald took all of Graves' strength and turned it into a vice. His love was twisted into cruelty and his passion traded for cool indifference. Grindelwald rips his soul right out of the streets and leaves it to rot and not a single person feels it. (Except, maybe, for Katherine Johnson, 17, executed for petty theft because she couldnt pay a fine. Martin Krugel, a muggle father whose magical children were taken away from him without a second's notice to be raised in wizarding homes. Maxine Brunswick, 11, collateral damage during a chase. Graves reads file after file from his hospital bed and wants to vomit.) With all of himself that he put into keeping his people safe, and no one raised an eyebrow.

Graves could handle the torture. Aurors are trained to withstand tourture, and he's always been too much a martyr. Three weeks in the hospital, three months in physical therepy, and he's back in the office. But Grindelwald doesn't break people; Grindelwald leaves a tiny crack in people's minds and he lets them break themselves.

Months after he goes back to work, months after Grindlewald goes to Azkaban to rot, and Aurors- _his_ Aurors- still fall silent when he enters a room. Still tense when he draws his wand and he wants to scream _I am nothing like he was!_  He's seen the memories that were used during the trial in Seraphina's pensieve, and it's clear: Grindelwald may have worn his face, but none of his heart. All of his drive and passion and caring was put away and succeeded by calculating coldness, by spite so clear in the eyes. Had no one bothered to look him in the eye? They certainly don't now. Even Seraphina, his closest friend through school, his friend of over a decade, won't look him in the face anymore. It could be pity, he thinks, or because she's afraid of who she will see in his eyes. Graves doesn't know which idea makes his stomach hurt more.

Goldstein is back where she belongs as an Auror, and while her sister gives him soft smiles in the halls (his mind is closed more tightly than ever before, and he is afraid each time that his walls have slipped and she can see his thoughts, raw and bitter, before he realizes that she's just being kind), Tina remains stiffly proffessional and curt with him. She knows that it wasn't _him_  who demoted her, right? That it wasn't _him_ who sentanced her to death with nothing but a wave of his hand? Right? He misses her sharp tongue and wit, misses going out for drinks with his team after solving a case. None of his Aurors will speak to him anymore. He was always approachable before, was he not? Private perhaps, but still open and friendly? How could it be that none of them noticed at all when Grindelwald swept away the affection he had for them?

Soon enough, when the room falls silent upon his arrival, he makes no attempt to start conversation. He narrows his eyes and sweeps by the desks into his office. His door is never left open anymore. By the time he gets through the mountain of files that Grindelwald sent to the executioner, he doesn't drop his head into his shaking hands and pour himself a drink, doesn't promise to be better. A girl on the street is crushed by a falling gutter during a duel and Graves barely flinches. His face doesn't waver when he notes the accident in the case file: _Cassidy Weaver, 7,  collateral damage._

He looks at himself in the mirror one morning and he can't tell if he's looking at himself or Grindlewald; can't tell if it's him staring hollow-eyed or an empty caricature. The mirror shatters and Graves doesn't notice the blood dripping down his fingers until he smears it on a paper twenty minutes later. Goldstein's sister leaves him gauze with his coffee later, but the gauze sits unused in a drawer and the coffee is cold on his desk at the end of the day. The paper never gets passed along, but nobody mentions it to him. Goldstein's sister is the only person who says anything to him lately, even if just blandly pleasent greetings when she leaves his coffee. The mugs are beginning to accumulate on his desk. _Even Grindelwald,_ Graves thinks dispassionately,  _could hold a conversation._

He stays late one night to finish paperwork for a case and when he opens his eyes it's morning. There's a steaming mug at his elbow. He brings the papers to Seraphina, who recieves them with a thin smile. She won't meet his eyes. When Graves looks up again, he's at his desk and there are two more mugs beside his quill. He takes a sip of one and gags- it's bitter and black and there are fuzzy balls of blue mold on the surface. He wonders idly how Grindelwald took his coffee. He would be the sort to take his coffee black, Graves thinks. Then again, so is he. There are mugs in rows on his bookshelf. His whole office smells like stale coffee and it makes Graves nauseous. Everything makes Graves nauseous. He can't remember the last time he left his office, but new coffee has stopped appearing.

Graves opens the door to leave and opens his apartment door. His clothes still smell like stale coffee, but his apartment smells like the bleach he doused everything the minute he had it back. Dusty shards of glass lay on the carpet in front of the broken mirror. When Graves moves towards them, he sees Grindelwald's gaunt face reflected back at him. He vomits, and it tastes like bile and decay and stale coffee.

Graves' mind cracks open when he stumbles into the bathroom and sees Grindelwald in the mirror. Graves' skull cracks open when he collapses on the marble floor. Nobody finds him for weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> where did this come from?


End file.
